It’s a simple question. There are some answers that seem clear cut, but some are not.
So I ask who or what is worth dying for?
Your country? We honour soldiers who give their lives in military service. But what about an Iraqi soldier who died in the service of Iraq?
Your children? Most parents would die for their children. What about someone else’s children? What if they are obnoxious little brats?
Your God? There are two aspects of this - dying because you refuse to renounce your belief, and dying in the furtherance of that same belief. What about suicide bombers? Are some forms of matyrdom acceptable and others not?
A stranger? There are people who risk their lives every day in order to save others. Firefighters spring most readily to mind. Does it make a difference whether they are good or evil? What if you don’t know?
Your friends? The truth? An opinion? A belief?
What is worth dying for? Where is the line between an honourable and courageous act and madness of fanatacism?
I’d like to think that I’d risk my life for pretty much any child; for some reason that I don’t fully comprehend, I happen to consider the death of a child very much worse than the death of an adult.
Somebody asked me the other day if I would die for my faith; I honestly can’t answer that; If somebody pointed a gun at my head and said ‘deny Christ or die’, certainly I wouldn’t want to lose my faith, but I don’t think that telling a madman a few words that he wants to hear would necessarily be doing so; God(assuming for the moment that there is one) knows my heart and might want me alive for some other purpose.
If it was the gun at somebody else’s head, and me having to make the denial, then that might be different, although it depends on so many things, like whether I was sufficiently convinced that the other person truly would be spared, regardless of what I said.
“The only TRULY honest attitude to human existance is one of total selfishness”
Marquis de Sade
I don’t think that anyone elses life would ever mean more to me than my own. But then I don’t have any kids.
I think people will chose to die for many things, but that none of them are truly WORTH dying for. Nothing matters than much.
If fact, most things just don’t matter at all.
Anything worth dying for is much more worth living for. Take Mangetout’s example, above: no doubt, it would be noble for him to die as a glorious martyr to the faith, but it’s much more worthwhile for him to carry on living, as an example to the rest of us. Same applies to other situations; you might die to protect your children, but you (and they) would be better off if you lived.
Ok, Altruism; a man, without stopping to think(much) leaps in front of a fast moving vehicle to save the life of a complete stranger; whether or not he is killed or injured is irrelevant; is this not altruistic? (If you tell me that on some deeply buried subconscious level, he did it just because he wanted to be a hero, I’m afraid my eyes may roll).
I’ll answer this question with my favorite passage in a book that has had a profound impact on my life:
“The world breaks everyone and afterwards many are strong at the broken places, but those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good, the very kind, and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these, rest assured, it will kill you too, but there will be no special hurry.”
Anticay - true. I didn’t say that any of those things (like suicide bombing) were or were not worth dying for, I just gave examples.
I think it is worth risking dying for anyone if there was a good chance you could save them.
I would die for a child I think. I won’t know until I get there. And I would probably die before renouncing my faith in God. You wouldn’t find me strapping explosives to my body for God in a million years however.
There are people I would die for - any of my immediate family, and some of my closest friends. I don’t know at what point the equation flips though and I wouldn’t. Does that make me a nutter? I don’t think so.
To those of you who say that nothing or no one is worth dying for, do you therefore consider those of us who would die for certain people/things to have a few screws loose?
Freedom is worth dying for
Love (of another person, place, or thing) is worth dying for
Hatred (of another person, place, or thing) is not worth dying for
And a 1/3 lb. patty of pure ground beef, cooked over charcoals (not gas!) with lettuce, tomatoes, onion, and plenty of ketchup is worth dying for…eventually (clogged arteries and what have you).
There are lots of things worth dying for, or more correctly, worth dying to save, but I think each situation is different.
Life is precious to me, and I’d do a lot of degrading things to keep it, with the hope of things improving. But I think everyone has their own personal point where they can bend no longer, and then they’ll overcome it or die, simple as that.
I don’t think there’s a hard and fast line, because circumstances will change things slightly, and it’s very much a personal decision.
